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<blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8076229" data-attributes="member: 71699">That is putting words in my mouth. Game mechanics benefit from playtesting: it is critically correlated with quality. I was interested in the plan for that.Pragmatically, about as buggy would do <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />There are a lot of choices in design, and power creep is not always accidental. In the past it sometimes appeared as a selling point: &quot;buy this and your characters will be more powerful&quot;. I am saying that I would dislike that path, and I do not believe it necessary. Design is a deliberate activity. Designers can make themselves conscious about power-creep and think of balance in terms of sustaining the most valid strategies. They can ask - is X strictly better than Y - and they can plan scenarios for playtesting that check X against a decent range of options.So while I would agree that the more pieces a system has, the more difficult it is to avoid assiduous optimisers finding stronger possibilities, I would reject the idea that one should shut down concern for power-creep just because of that. One can still seek to craft balanced options - ones that sustain the most mechanically valid choices.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="clearstream, post: 8076229, member: 71699"] That is putting words in my mouth. Game mechanics benefit from playtesting: it is critically correlated with quality. I was interested in the plan for that. Pragmatically, about as buggy would do :) There are a lot of choices in design, and power creep is not always accidental. In the past it sometimes appeared as a selling point: "[I]buy this and your characters will be more powerful[/I]". I am saying that I would dislike that path, and I do not believe it necessary. Design is a deliberate activity. Designers can make themselves conscious about power-creep and think of balance in terms of sustaining the most valid strategies. They can ask - is X strictly better than Y - and they can plan scenarios for playtesting that check X against a decent range of options. So while I would agree that the more pieces a system has, the more difficult it is to avoid assiduous optimisers finding stronger possibilities, I would reject the idea that one should shut down concern for power-creep just because of that. One can still seek to craft balanced options - ones that sustain the most mechanically valid choices. [/QUOTE]

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